Ethical or Unethical Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making a webpage visible to search engines with respect to the 'key words' or searched words that are entered into the searching program of a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Msn. This is a type of internet marketing that has to do with placement. E-commerce websites which provide retail products or services on the internet conduct SEO in order to have their links appear to browsers amongst the first results on search results pages (ideally being the first result on the first page against a set of search words that describe their business).

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An example would be; for a consumer electronics retailer on the internet who sells portable music players. Such a retailer would normally identify key searched words (keywords) relating to the portable-music-player-retail business (these likely being 'mp3 player', 'iPod', 'walkman', 'mp3' etc). The retailer (or website owner) will then conduct SEO against these key words so that when visitors and potential customers use major search engines to search for any of these keywords, the retailer's page will appear in a good position, ranked high in the results; and therefore the likelihood of a visitor browsing onto this page would be higher; and then the more the visitors the more the customers.

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Black or white?

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There is however a set of SEO techniques which try to use loopholes and weaknesses in search algos to appear higher ranked amongst results. Black-hat SEO techniques are ones which search engines have banned and are always trying to weed out as the websites which use them are not usually the genuine article.

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Black-Hat SEO

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Keyword stuffing (in white text): Some websites write relevant keywords over and over in the scheme of the webpage's background and which are not visible to the naked eye but are read by search engines anyway.

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Server scripts: Some scripts on WebPages use malicious code to confuse search engines and appear irrespective of content or propose amongst search results against any keyword. This is now a rarity as search engines are always developing better and stronger algos to prevent this type of scripting.

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Unnatural Link buying: Some new websites buy a very large number of links from other websites in order to appear relevant to search engines. While SEO is a long term process and websites need to improve in popularity naturally in order to improve their search engine ranking (page rank), this is a shortcut to that end, and is considered unethical and is frowned upon by both search engines and bloggers/webmasters.

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White-Hat SEO

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This is ethical SEO. It is allowed by search engines and is a very strong foundation for the improvement of a pages search result rank (or page rank). This type of SEO is both conducted off-page and on-page.

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Off-Page SEO:

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Article and press release writing and submission:

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Articles submission service: Quality articles with informative content are submitted on various forums on behalf of a website.

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Press Release submission: Press releases and news items are submitted to 'get the website name out there' and improve viability.

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Directory submission: The website URL and Name along with a short description are submitted on directory websites and business portals.

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Blogging: Bloggers are used to submit information and relevant comments on popular blogs and social media/ networking websites related to the websites business area.

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The types of links used with blogging are relevant Do-Follow and hyperlinked keywords and are essential to improve page rank, especially for Google search results.

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ON-Page SEO:

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Articles, press releases and quality content: Articles about the webpage's area of business and news items and press releases for the web business are written and submitted on submission websites. This contributes to the overall popularity of the webpage.

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Meta-tags: The description field in the meta-tags (written in the HTML code of the page) is one amongst many things that search engines consider. The description field is properly defined and written in relevance to a WebPage's exact content and proposes. This helps search engines identify the webpage as a genuine result.